Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, there is nothing inherently immoral or unjust in the concept of a cap. It all depends upon the way in which it is handled. It might be handled in an understanding, intelligent, sensible and equitable way, although it might not be so easy to save money in net terms or indeed eradicate a fundamental injustice; I accept that. The Minister has quoted the court of public opinion, where there is, I accept, an overwhelming majority verdict in favour of the Government’s attitude to a cap. I say with humility and the utmost respect that this depends entirely on how well founded that decision on the part of the great public was. It is possible, and I respectfully suggest, that it is a fool’s gold concept of justice—and noble Lords will remember what fool’s gold is. As a small boy I remember being handed a large lump of quartz, and inside that quartz was a gleaming vein of dull metal that seemed to be the real thing, but it was iron pyrite—utterly worthless and totally misleading. I ask the Government to consider very deeply whether this is not a fool’s gold kind of justice. If you deal with families that have arrived at a certain economic situation from very different directions in exactly the same way, are you doing justice? The Government’s policy draws no distinction between a family that is totally workshy and has had no one working for the past quarter of a century, and another family that had an excellent work record until the head of that family, through redundancy and no fault of his own, lost his job in the past six months. A family with a small number of children might not be affected by the cap even though it is totally workshy, while another family with every merit possible in its favour might be totally impoverished. That is the injustice. I do not know the exact answer, but I suspect it is in this direction: that one should look not just at the totality of income that comes into a household but at how much of that income is disposable. That, to my mind, is a much more real and indeed equitable test. That is why I support this amendment. It may well not be perfect—likewise the other amendments for that purpose—but it has the ring of justice about it.